"Where is he now?"
"Dead. He was very quietly killed while resisting arrest and now resides in an unmarked grave outside Paris."
"And I'm to take his place," Carter said. "Did he have anything to do with the stolen missiles?"
"Nothing. Evidently assassinations — the planning and execution of them — was all Carstocus cared about. It was his idea of success, proving to himself that he was just a little bit better than anyone else in the world. The money was secondary."
"Nice guy," Carter drawled.
"Paris SDECE has agreed to set you up with everything they have on Carstocus. From Paris you take off for Andorra.»
"Why Andorra?"
"Two reasons. The first is just theory, a wild guess. Andorra is at the opposite end of the Pyrenees from Basque country, around San Sebastian. Spanish Guardia Civil do not cross the border into Andorra."
Carter nodded. "So if the Basques were behind the missile heist and they are moving them into Andorra…"
"Exactly. The second reason you're going to Andorra is because Armanda de Nerro lives there."
Two more thick files were passed across the desk to Carter.
"One," Hawk said, "is the life of Armanda de Nerro. It makes interesting reading. The other is a background file on the ETA — the Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna."
"The Basque terrorist network," Carter said, hefting both of the files at once.
Hawk nodded. "That will be your homework on the flight from Dulles. You leave in two hours."
Carter checked his watch and frowned. "The last commercial flight has already left for Paris…"
"You're not flying commercial. The Vice-President is meeting day after tomorrow with the heads of the Common Market countries in Paris. I've managed to sneak you aboard Air Force Two as an Amalgamated reporter. Disappear right after you land at Orly, and check in with SDECE as soon as possible."
A last question popped into Carter's mind as Hawk stood. "Why Carstocus?"
"Because of his trade," Hawk barked, softening it with a lopsided grin. "We're going to leak the fact that Nicholas Carstocus is Bluebeard. That should make nice bait, don't you think?"
Five
Nick Carter managed to lose himself with the elite of the press corps on Air Force Two.
When the plane was airborne and he was fortified with three fingers of expensive scotch, he gravitated away from the others and found a solo seat.
Then he started on the files, beginning with Armanda de Nerro.
She was quite a lady.
The de Nerro clan was Basque to the core. They were wealthy landowners, and their presence in the Basque state of Navarra near Pamplona went back years.
Armanda's grandfather, Don Pepe de Nerro, had fought with all his heart on the Loyalist side against Franco. Later, when the Fascist dictatorship became firmly entrenched in power, his son Luis carried on the fight as the leader of an underground guerrilla organization.
Eventually, Luis was unmasked. His lands were confiscated, and he fled to France and exile, taking the now aging Don Pepe with him.
That was in 1951, the same year Luis's daughter, Armanda, was born in Carcassonne, France.
Though his lands had been lost, Luis had managed to flee with enough money to retain his life-style in exile and carry on his fight against Franco.
The fact that he had married the daughter of another wealthy Basque exile, Don Ramon de Leon, also did not hurt his financial position.
Luis's wife, Maria, was as rabidly anti-France and pro-Basque as her husband, but there was no record of her becoming a guerrilla fighter like Luis.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
She lived in splendid sumptuousness in a huge villa near the beautiful old town of Carcassonne and raised her daughter to be a lady.
It could be assumed that between Maria and her old grandfather, Don Pepe, Armanda's education had been liberally spiced with grand tales of her often absent father's patriotic deeds and the Basque «right» to a separatist homeland from Spain.
Old Don Pepe died when Armanda was twelve. Luis couldn't attend his father's funeral. He was in jail in Barcelona for leading four other Basques in a bank robbery to gain "funds of liberation."
Four years later, Luis would be dead, killed in an attempt to escape.
Between 1963 and 1969, when Armanda reached the age of eighteen, little was heard from mother or daughter.
Then, in June of 1969, Armanda married Pierre du Cort, a man forty years her senior.
The marriage lasted a year. Du Cort was killed in an auto accident on the Amalfi Drive in Italy.
He left Armanda a very wealthy widow.
For the next two years, mother and daughter petitioned Franco to allow them to return to Spain.
The answer was always no.
In retaliation Armanda toured Europe, proselytizing against the Fascist dictator by day, and having liaisons with rich and influential men by night.
Shortly after Franco's death in 1975, the beautiful socialite married again, this time to a rich German industrialist.
Alas, this marriage also had a sad ending for the groom. He died in an airplane crash near Innsbruck.
King Juan Carlos lifted Franco's exile on the de Nerros, but Maria loudly proclaimed to all who would listen, "…I will never return to the land of my fathers until it is free of Spanish tyranny!"
Evidently, Armanda agreed with her mother. The twice-widowed beauty was now fabulously wealthy. She traveled in the jettest of jet sets and used her associations to increase her wealth.
She gained a reputation as a complex woman, with deep-seated convictions about her Basque heritage as well as a seeming thirst for life in the fast lane with the very kinky and very rich of the world.
In 1979 Armanda dropped out of sight for two years. She surfaced again in 1981, in Italy. Shortly afterward, she was arrested.
Lupe de Varga was the Basque equivalent of the Palestinian terrorist and assassin, Carlos the Jackal. Acting as the Basque liaison to Italy's Red Brigade, de Varga was one of the prime movers and planners in a plot to kidnap a Swiss multimillionaire for ransom. Once the plan was carried out, the Basque separatist movement and the Red Brigade would split the proceeds to help finance further terrorist activities in their respective countries.
Before the plot could be consummated, it was uncovered. De Varga and five of his Red Brigade brothers were caught in a San Remo villa. Rather than surrender, they opted for a shoot-out with the Italian authorities.
Ail of them were shot and burned to cinders in one wing of the villa. Armanda de Nerro was also in the villa. She was captured and indicted in the Italian courts for terrorist activity.
Besides being the registered owner of the villa, Armanda was rumored to have been de Varga's mistress. Because this was only rumor, and because she pleaded her innocence on the grounds that she had been kidnapped — and considering her wealth, that made sense — held against her will for months, and forced to participate, she was eventually exonerated.
Her striking beauty did not hurt her cause in an Italian courtroom, and neither did a parade of her former wealthy and influential lovers when they came forward as character witnesses.
Once her freedom was assured, de Nerro resumed her jet-setting ways on the Continent. Interpol kept track of her for a while, suspecting her continued liaison with terrorists in general and the Basque Euzkadi Ta Askatasuna in particular. When they could get nothing concrete they dropped the surveillance.
It was about then, fourteen months before, that the lady packed up, bag and baggage, and moved to Andorra with her by now aging but still active mother.
Carter closed the folder and eyeballed the steward for a fresh drink. When it came he lit a cigarette and sipped the scotch reflectively.